According to a survey, in 2020, which marked the first of the COVID-19 pandemic, death by suicide increased 25 per cent in Maharashtra among small business owners.
The NCRB report classified vendors, tradesmen and other small business owners among the self-employed categories are most affected.
For the second consecutive year, Maharashtra topped the chart of most suicides among all states and union territories with 19,909 in 2020 against 18,916 the previous year.
In Maharashtra, 1,610 such self-employed individuals took their own lives in 2020 as against 1,289 in 2019, the NCRB report stated.
Apart from the self-employed, it was the farm sector in the state that was impacted the most. The state had 4,006 suicides among farmers, cultivators and agricultural labourers in 2020 against 3,927 cases in 2019.
Overall, suicides in Maharashtra and Mumbai rose 5.2 per cent and 4.3 per cent in 2020 over 2019.
Experts said the surge in suicides in this group - from 9,052 in 2019 to 11,716 in 2020 - underlined the economic hardships due to the lockdown imposed amid ongoing pandemic.
Maharashtra has the highest COVID-19 case tally with 66 lakhs and a death toll of 1.4 lakhs.
Incidentally, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka record higher number of overall suicides as compared to other Indian states.
Meanwhile, according to NCRB accidental deaths and suicide report 2020, it witnessed an increase by 30 per cent nationwide, as compared to 2019. The overall death by suicide among the self-employed in India rose to 17,332, up from 16,098 in 2019.
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